1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to wireless communications, and, more particularly, to managing access to coverage areas in wireless communication systems.
2. Description of Related Art
Many people use mobile stations, such as cell phones and personal digital assistants, to communicate with cellular wireless networks, which typically provide communication services such as voice, text messaging, and packet-data communication to these mobile stations. The mobile stations and networks typically communicate with each other over a radio frequency (RF) air interface according to a wireless protocol such as 1×RTT CDMA, EV-DO, WiMax, etc.
Mobile stations typically conduct these wireless communications with one or more base transceiver stations (BTSs), each of which send communications to and receive communications from mobile stations over the air interface. Each BTS is in turn communicatively connected with an entity known as a base station controller (BSC) (or radio network controller (RNC)), which controls one or more BTSs, and which acts as a conduit between the BTS(s) and one or more switches or gateways, such as a mobile switching center (MSC) and/or a packet data serving node (PDSN), which may interface with one or more signaling and/or transport networks.
As such, mobile stations can typically communicate with one or more endpoints over the one or more signaling and/or transport networks from anywhere inside the coverage area of one or more BTSs, via the BTS(s), a BSC, and an MSC and/or a PDSN. In typical arrangements, MSCs interface with the public switched telephone network (PSTN), while PDSNs interface with one or more core packet-data networks and/or the Internet.